POCATELLO — An order for 11 short-barreled assault rifles for campus security officers was suspended shortly before longtime Public Safety Director Stephen Chatterton announced his retirement after 23 years at ISU.
“It came to us as a surprise,” said ISU President Arthur Vailas about Chatterton’s retirement. “We’re very grateful to him for his service.”
The retirement also follows some friction with city police regarding the role of ISU’s Public Safety officers and an order from Idaho State Police Director Col. Ralph Powell suspending the use of red lights on campus patrol vehicle light-bars.
As the Director of Public Safety, Chatterton was instrumental in making ISU one of the safest college campuses in the nation, according to campus officials. One of his last efforts was to begin the process of acquiring short-barreled AR-15 assault rifles with noise suppressors for campus security officers. The rifles were ordered, according to Associate Vice President for ISU Facilities Phil Moessner.
That pre-paid order has been canceled, but Moessner said the university may be on the hook for some of the cost of the guns because the short-barreled rifles would be subject to higher federal taxes if sold to anyone outside of an authorized law enforcement agency. Moessner also defended the initial purchase.
“As a university, we had made a decision that during active-shooter situations the rifles would be one of the tools needed,” Moessner said.
Moessner said Chatterton had always told him that if a shooting took place on campus his officers would respond immediately if they had the weapons. Since the guns on campus law went into effect last summer, ISU has opted to arm its security officers with Glock 9mm pistols.
ISU legal counsel David Alexander said the rifles would have only been used in an emergency active-shooter scenario. Alexander also said the university had secured the necessary clearance from the federal Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agency. He said there was a slight glitch about the university using an FBI identification number given to it so it could do background checks, but that had been cleared up.
Both Alexander and Moessner said Chatterton will be difficult to replace because of his administrative and planning abilities, as well as his experience in law enforcement.
“The patrol piece we do is just a small part of what we do,” Moessner said.
Moessner said although Chatterton’s retirement was sudden, it was something he talked about the past few years.
“There were some milestones he wanted to achieve with the department and he accomplished that,” Moessner said.
(9) comments
This is one scary story! One of the issues facing our country is the over-militarization of local (and now campus) police forces. Against whom were these11 weapons supposed to be used? College students? The article said they were fitted with "sound suppressors." That sounds an awful lot like "silencer" to me. But for what reason? So as not to create a noise disturbance against the people you're killing? Are these campus guys trained in the use of these things? Why are they necessary in the first place? What is going on in Pocatello?
According to AR-15 experts, the killing range of an AR-15 is 5,000 meters. There are a lot of homes within 3 miles of ISU.
With all this new information coming to light over the past several months concerning ISU public security, I have one question;
" Were peoples (students and public) rights violated by ISU security for unlawful traffic stops and/or being detained?" If so, ISU could be buried in law suits for years to come.
On a side note, it seems to be perfect timing for Chatterton to announce his retirement. I believe there is more to this story of Chatterton retiring then the public knows.
ISU Security is just that a Security Team, not law enforcement. Chatterton was pushing in every way for this to be a Campus Police Department without all of the necessary procedures to do so.
In all of the articles that have been written about this subject, none have addressed the improper stopping and detention of citizens on campus under the guise of being a law enforcement agency. If a private citizen were to do that he or she would be facing felony charges. Its too bad that the paper doesn't dig a little bit and interview some of the people who have been improperly stopped or detained by ISU Security. The paper only covered a small amount about the professor that shot himself and the cleanup before calling Pocatello Police. The public is entitled to know more about what is occurring with ISU Security and what dangers they are placing the public in.
Now we are giving them Glocks and Assault Rifles. Did ISU ever have a public meeting to discuss changing from Security to Law Enforcement. I don't recall any public meetings?
This is some scary stuff. My experience with ISU security (NOT certified law enforcement officers) and their law enforcement program is that they are not very good at vetting out the wannabe's with serious authority issues. (Why should they? Pay the tuition and fee's and you are good to go.) It is spooky enough that they are allowed to carry 9mm hand guns, now they want to provide them with assault weapons with silencers? I am fairly certain that this would create more problems and confusion should a real active shooter scenario occur.
WOW! This story actually scares me.
...probably just another fiasco perpetrated by the retiring Director who has seemed to want to overstep his bounds on several occasions.
On applications for transfer of short-barreled rifles and silencers to law enforcement agencies, the signature of the chief law enforcement officer in this area (local chief of police, sheriff, head of the State police, or State or local district attorney or prosecutor) is required on the application.
Who signed this application? Was it Sheriff Nielsen, Chief Marchand, Colonel Powell, or Stephen Herzog?
Last week, the Journal lamented that fact that ISU "must" spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to protect us from law-abiding citizens who lawfully carry concealed firearms for self-defense.
This week we find out that ISU was building a special weapons and tactics team and purchasing rifles and silencers to arm the team just to protect us from law-abiding citizens.
This article implies that ISU was purchasing the guns under the law enforcement exemption in gun control laws. Law enforcement agencies can buy short-barreled rifles and silencers without complying with the onerous regulations that the rest of us are subject to. And sworn law enforcement officers may possess those firearms.
But ISU public safety is not a law enforcement agency and the security personnel are not sworn police officers. It appears as if Federal and Idaho gun control laws were willfully violated.
Will this incident be investigated as a crime? Will the Journal do some investigative reporting to get to the bottom of it?
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